The world championships in Oz becomes but a tortilla chip in the movable feast of global doping as El Pistolero trips the Dope-O-Meter®. Must’ve been all that kung pao pork before the final parade stage, que no? Que triste es la vida loca.
• Late update: Juliet Macur of The New York Times notes: “In Contador’s case, the Spanish antidoping agency will probably be in charge.” I feel better already.
Lots of chat in comments about The Good Old Days®, when men rode steel and Campy.
I missed those halcyon days of yesteryear, having come to “serious” cycling late in life (I didn’t start racing until I was in my mid-30s). During high school and college I rode a series of Schwinns — five- and 10-speed Varsity and Continental behemoths — but when I took up cycling again in the early 1980s it was astride a Centurion LeMans (either a 10 or 12).
I had the chance to do the right thing when I went shopping for my next bike. But instead of buying a Bianchi from a local shop that is no longer in existence I went to the Dark Side and bought a Trek 560 from Criterium Bicycles. it was a purple-and-yellow monstrosity that looked like a rolling pustule. An acid flashback must have driven that particular purchase.
A couple more Treks followed. First came a mountain bike (an 830 Antelope, I think), then a 1200 (broke the frame at the right rear aluminum dropout in a city-limits sprint outside Española), and finally a 1500 (a courtesy upgrade from Trek with steel dropouts).
I finally went Italian with a Campy-equipped Pinarello Prologo TT time-trial bike (an old Team Crest machine bought used from Denver Spoke), but this was a mental lapse, on a par with a bald-headed fat bastard who thinks that driving a Maserati will get him laid.
Next came a series of road and mountain Specializeds in steel, aluminum and carbon (we had an amazingly compliant rep in Santa Fe, ol’ Special Dave). My first “real” cyclo-cross bike was a steel Specialized Sirrus road bike that a frame-building acquaintance doctored, adding canti’ posts and subtracting the chainstay bridge.
’Cross is what finally put me back on the road to steel for real. My first really real ’cross bike was a Day-Glo yellow Pinarello, bought cheaply with the assistance of Tim Campen, then at Veltec. Then I met Brent Steelman at Interbike Anaheim and all hell broke loose. First it was a Steelman CC in Excell steel, then a series of Eurocrosses in Dedacciai, Reynolds and True Temper, even a time-trial bike (another mental lapse, but screw it, I’ll start racing multisport again, just you wait and see).
I’ve since ridden a ton of aluminum, titanium and carbon bikes from a variety of manufacturers — Bianchi, Voodoo, LeMond, GT, Look, Cannondale, Jamis, you name it — but I still reach for the steel first. Usually it’s the Nobilette or one of the Eurocrosses, but I even like the inexpensive steel from outfits like Soma and Voodoo, and it’s hard to find a shop rat who doesn’t ride something from Surly.
And there ain’t a Campy-equipped bike in the lot. Not among the rolling stock, anyway.
Man, fall is here with a vengeance. When Dennis the Menace and Dr. Schenkenstein popped round this morning at the start of a cyclo-cross ride, The Menace was sporting ear warmers and a jacket while the good Herr Doktor was in full winter kit, complete with tights.
I was supposed to join them, but there were Saturday-night leftovers to be posted on VeloNews.com and nobody around to post them other than Your Humble Narrator. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I get to ride when it’s 60-something instead of 40-something.
And the question of which ’cross bike to choose for a bracing fall outing gets easier to answer every day, thanks to evil spirits and my neglect of basic maintenance.
The Jamis Supernova has been outfitted with road rubber and press-ganged into temporary pavement duty while the road bike languishes at Old Town, thanks to Ritchey’s inability to provide a properly built fork.
The Nobilette’s Michelins are balder than I am, the red Steelman looks like a dusty relic from some pharaoh’s tomb and the mango Steelman needs brake pads that don’t go skreeeeeeeeeeeeeek when I hit the binders.
The Soma Double Cross is in fine condition, but remains in a loaded-tourer configuration. And the Voodoo Wazoo is still a foul-weather townie, with straight bars and fenders.
So my choices are buy some tires, wash a bike or endure bad noise.
Right. A road ride it is.
… right now over at VeloNews.com, in partnership with CyclingDirt.com.
• Late update: Christ, that was woeful. The kindest thing I can say about it was that it was better than no live streaming video at all. Phil and Paul have nothing to fear. Neither do Beavis and Butthead. Here’s a hint and a half for your ass, guys: People watch streaming video to find out what’s going on in the fucking race, not what you’re having for lunch.
Have you ever noticed that their stuff is shit but your shit is stuff? — George Carlin
A cycling journalist is a person who can hold two completely contradictory notions at the same time without his or her head exploding.
For example, bike racing is simultaneously beautiful and ravaged by dope (think Lindsay Lohan, if you can bear it). And a $2,679.99 Fisher Transport+ cargo bike “isn’t remotely cheap” while a $7,659.99 Trek Top Fuel mountain bike apparently is eminently affordable.
I wouldn’t buy either bike, myself. I have an old titanium hardtail that suits my mountain-biking needs, and for shopping expeditions I can always ride the Soma Double Cross with panniers fore and aft ($519.98 frame and fork; build kit, racks and panniers not included).
The biggest quarrel I have with both the Transport+ and the Top Fuel involves not their pricing but their extreme specialization. You probably shouldn’t ride the former on a nifty bit of single-track or the latter to the Safeway. But I can handle both on the Double Cross. Five minutes with a couple hex keys and a combo wrench and I can have my choice of a loaded tourer, sport tourer, rigid 700c mountain bike or cyclo-cross bike.
And that’s no shit. Stuff. Whatever.
Mad Blog Media 